Best of: Selling Artwork

A Collection of the Best Articles on Selling Artwork by Edward M. Fielding

Selling Artwork – Long before I was a best selling fine art and stock photographer, I was a little elementary school kid trading and selling marbles on the school yard. Later I bought a badge making kit from the back of a comic book and started selling buttons and badges to my classmates. Selling was in my blood.

In college I had a couple business schemes going – a dating service for my fellow students (this was in the old school, pre-Internet days, matches were made by paper survey and intuition) and a party promotion/DJ/Booze Cruise company. Neither one was properly capitalized or successful but I did graduate from Boston University with a degree in Marketing and had a successful career in the publishing and web-zine industry specializing in market research. Needless say I know how to analysis a market and study consumer behavior.

I left the publishing world after the big dot.com and computer publication crash (anyone remember BYTE Magazine?) and became a stay at home Dad supporting my wife’s career and work with a partner on a venture called “Fishboy Art and Design” which sold t-shirts and accessories to fishing fanatics and tourist locations. The artwork was done by my partner Paul Ocepek, I handled the website and marketing.

As the kid got older I started having some more free time to dedicate to my own artwork, specifically photography. First with re-learning photography in the digital age and then figuring out how to sell my work so I wouldn’t have to go back into the rat race.

It took me about three years of research, practice, exploring, testing, discovering and daily work to start to see some consistent results, but eventually all that work started to pay off.

This collection of articles represent some of the best tips and advice I can give on selling artwork. I can’t create the artwork for you. I can’ t force you to work hard, work smart and put in all of the time and effort it takes to get your work seen in front of the millions of other people trying to sell their own artwork. But perhaps these articles will you a sense of how to get started and will provide a chance for you to skip ahead of some of the pitfalls I found along the way.

Will this advice work for you? Each artist’s journey to success takes its own path but some selling truths are consistent. Good luck Grasshopper. — Edward M. Fielding